Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka have a well-deserved reputation for long place names, which I have covered here earlier. Another interesting point noticed by one of my friends is the unconventional Devanagiri fonts used in station signs in parts of South India.
Here is a random sample of station signs in Kerala. They have varying Devanagari fonts. Transliteration into Hindi is not always correct.
The longest station names in Kerala would probably be these two:
The capital:
And this smaller place:
A few more at random:
Alappuzha was earlier called Alleppey, which is uncomfortably close to Aleppo in Syria.
In the above two cases, “South” has been transliterated into Hindi while “East” has been translated.
(This is close to Tamil Nadu, so Tamil also appears).
And finally a short one.
Veli is accompanied by Kochuveli or “Small Veli”. However, Kochuveli station is a terminus and much larger than Veli station.
Hindi purists would note that sometimes the script used is not “standard”.
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